Last year you played extreme metal festival Bloodstock. This year you're at Fairport's Cropredy Convention. Different crowd, right?

Did you ever see that film The Producers? It's going to be like Springtime For Hitler – the audience all there with their mouths open wide. But I love that reaction. Last year we played Bonnaroo, and it was like going to summer camp – everyone's green, everyone's groovy, eating tofu. And then here comes Alice Cooper, on at midnight. We're the ghost story at the end of camp-out.

Do you alter your repertoire for a festival show?

To us, an audience is an audience. Put us in front of a Sinatra crowd and we'd play the same show. I have never gone out there with the attitude, 'Boy, I hope you like us tonight'. I'm like, grab 'em by the throat, make them like you! But we know they want to hear all the hits, and we don't shy away from that – we had 14 Top 40 hits, and all of them are in the show. You have to close with School's Out and Elected, or the audience are like, 'What are you doing?'

The Alice Cooper show is big on theatre. What's your favourite set-piece?

We've got this opening thing where Alice comes on stage through a shower of sparks, and every night you can hear the audience gasp. I love that; it means we've already got 'em. Also, there's the bit where Alice goes on the operating table during Feed My Frankenstein. They throw the switch, and it's like something from a 30s Frankenstein movie. It looks great in the dark.

Have festivals changed a lot since the 70s?

Well, back then we were playing alongside Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. We stood out. I remember one show: 'In one hour, Santana. In three hours, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.' And then it was like, 'WARNING – in five hours, Alice Cooper will be on. If you are on the brown acid, please report to…' We just laughed our heads off, because none of us ever did drugs. We were drinkers. But we loved to scare the hippies.

Have you seen any festival shows put on by other bands which you've really admired?

I did a show at Milton Keynes with Foo Fighters. I sang Eighteen, Under My Wheels and School's Out with them. They really know how to work a crowd – they would have fit right in back in 1975, they just rock it every night. Nirvana, all those guys were our fans.

Are you a keen camper?

Oh no, we go for luxury. My idea of roughing it is no cable [TV].

Finally, you're a golfing fanatic – do you ever look out over festival fields and think, I'd like to tee up on that?

Absolutely. It's crushing, sometimes – you're on tour, you get to a place with a golf course, and it's closed. That drives me crazy. Golf is therapy. I used to drink every day; now I play golf every day. They should prescribe it.